This One’s For Aaron…

The first I heard about Aaron Ramsey’s desperately sad leg break was yesterday afternoon at Ljubljana airport (I was away on a stag do and saw no football the whole weekend). I overheard a couple of English guys talking about ‘Ramsey’ and ‘Shawcross’, and that the latter had left the pitch in tears.

From that overheard fragment of casual conversation, it was easy to fill in the gaps. Ryan Shawcross had hurt Aaron Ramsey badly with a violent tackle, I was sure of that.

Why was I so sure of that? Because this is Tony Pulis’s Stoke, a big, ugly and horribly limited team which has used bully-boy tactics in the past against Arsenal (Would Pulis dare employ the same roughhouse stuff against Fergie’s Man Utd? We all know the answer to that) and whose zenith of creativity is a long throw-in. Football? From the hands of Rory Delap onto the head of whoever and not a foot in sight sometimes.

Stoke City today are symptomatic of English football’s obsession with ‘sticking it up them’, ‘them’ being the glove-wearing Johnny Foreigners who come over here, take our money and play better football than us (i.e. Arsenal). This vile obsession, which, sociologically speaking, you can tie in with the pathetic behaviour of English hooligans (i.e. the insecure, no-imagination wasters with dead-end jobs who dwell in dead-end market towns and consume gallons of pissy lager to fuel sub-moronic Football Factory fantasies), is in danger of turning football into a blood sport. It doesn’t help when the Prem’s media cheerleaders (Sky, The Sun etc.) encourage such obsessions.

I will blog more about this depressing and very emotional story later today – after I’ve slept like the dead – but for now all I wish to do is send my absolute best wishes to Ramsey.

Oh, and you MUST read Arseblog’s post on the Shawcross/Ramsey incident. It is spine-chillingly brilliant and the most heartlfelt, poignant article about football I’ve read in a very long time. LINK

14Comments

Shawcross turned down playing for Wales, Ramsey plays for Wales. How ironic.

Anyway, we will see how this unfolds but I don’t think it was malicious and a largely freak accident, sorry everyone, I hope Ramsey has a speedy recovery, heard Robbie Savage say his broken leg was worst (higher) and Savage came back. I feel for both lads, Shawcross too.

I’m glad you didn’t go so far as to brand Shawcross as malicious, although you seen to want to draw the conclusion that he was ‘following orders’. I prefer the more thoughtful account on The Independent website:

“Television evidence suggested Shawcross was guilty of mis-control rather than recklessness or malice. The referee, Peter Walton, looked unsure how, or even whether, to penalise the former Manchester United reserve, producing a red card only after seeing how badly Ramsey was hurt. This was not Roy Keane and Alf-Inge Haaland revisited.”

Young children can’t differentiate between outcome and and intent. Fortunately, most of us mature and learn that sometimes bad things happen and its no-one’s fault.

If someone did something like that deliberately, then they should find themselves in jail, but that’s not the case here. Its horrible for any young footballer to hit by a career threatening injury. Let’s not let this horrific *accident* ruin two careers.

These things happen in sport, it happens to arsenal as they have such shrewd players.

end of the day shawcross should of pulled out if he knew he wasnt going to win the tackle, they are at a good enough level to judge that easy,

i laughed when shawcross got a call up to the english team, just comes to show that england is really struggling to string a team together for the worldcup.

bl for ramsey, sometimes you become a victim of your own success,
“big four” teams are always are gonna get snapped by crap teams in the premierleague, thier players are just not up to standand, not the clubs fault, they dont have the money or the talent.

fine steve, but can you explain the fact that it’s only against arsenal that these “unintended, miscontrolled non-malicious” tackles are meted? just explain it a bit more because we all know the general englishman’s view of these incidents already…

Of course not, because they would be getting some of the same stuff back – it’s why Man Utd are champions and Arsenal are not. Arsenal play some of the most brilliant one-touch football you’ll ever see, but football is also a sport that involves physical contact, and in that area they are severely lacking. Remember when they had Vieira, Keown, Lauren etc., and they could actually be involved in brawls? That’s when they had a chance of winning something.

Before we castrate the boy Shawcross, there was no malice and by the looks of that barely any if any contact at all. It was a horrific leg break though, and from the ref’s perspective (and sol campbell’s reaction) he had to send the Shawcross off.

Wenger however is the biggest fucking hypocrite, he said of Shawcross “The tackle from Shawcross was horrendous. Spare me how nice he is. Did you see where the injury is? It is not acceptable that we lost three players to bad tackles – Abou Diaby, Eduardo and now Ramsey. To lose a player of quality at 19 like Ramsey is hard to accept. That is not football for me and I refuse to live with it. The FA have to act.” yet when William Gallas almost breaks Mark Davies leg he says “There was a bit of an over-reaction with the way it was treated. If it is a bad, malicious tackle I can understand that it is shown every half an hour, but the way that happened, it can happen every game”

hahahaha, josh you stupid mug
“by the looks of that barely any if any contact at all”
we all saw it you idiot, i was there – even match of the day showed it twice and there was contact.
that link you just sent out makes you look so so dumb right now fella

First, I am glad you linked to Arseblog as it is a great read. My view on this is similar to that of driving and speeding (as arseblog also points out). If Shawcross is speeding and hits Ramsey by law it’s their fault regardless of intent or outcome. If Aaron gets hurt, it’s maybe a fine; if he dies, it’s jail time. I don’t see why it should be different in football. Now, if Shawcross is driving around Tony his boss and Tony tells him to speed and he hits Aaron, it is partially Tony’s fault as well. If the media starts saying speeding is alright because it’s the only way to beat the traffic, they must share part of the blame as well. Speeding usually doesn’t result in someone getting killed or badly hurt, neither does “sticking it up them”. When it does you can’t simply say “that was unlucky for the guy who got killed”. I don’t care if Ghandi broke Ramsey’s leg if the media and managers encourage behaviour that can have that outcome they must take some of the responsibility as well as Ghandi. If Ghandi didn’t mean to hurt him that should be taken into consideration, but the issue is that Ramsey will likely spend the better part of a year before he is on the field again and a simple 3 match ban while ignoring the real issues will not do justice. The lease players like Ramsey deserve is for the FA/FIFA to do whatever they can to stop these things from happening.

As with France’s handball goal. It happened, you can’t change it, but make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Ollie Irish i sincerly thank you for posting this fine article. it’s nice to see a few people have the balls to call it as it is. it was not malicious per say but certainly a tackle he would have not gone flying into if it wasn’t instilled into him that arsenal ‘don’t like it up em’
like a drunk driver who accidently runs over an innocent victim has no case to say it was not intentional so to shawcross has no case to say it was not intentional. that is missing the point completely. obviously he did not indent to break poor aaron’s leg but he should be punished as the driver would be punished (in footballing terms a longer ban for starters to disuade reckless no regard for the consequences tackling) but we all know that won’t happen.
josh you are a bleeding CUNT. gallas’ tackle was most definitely bad but that kind of challenge while i’m not condoling it does infact happen quite often. it did not break a bone in his leg let alone two but since it was a frenchman making the challenge on an englishmen he was villified and cruxified to an unbelieveable level while saints like martin taylor apparently didn’ event deserve a yellow card for his challenge on eddy according to a cunt equal to you josh in steve bruce. basically josh you twat i hope this doesn’t happen to some player from the team you support because then you’ll know you pathetic muppet.

Josh, if you seriously want to believe that is how Aaron Ramsey ended up with an obliterated leg then i suggest you get your nationality changed from british to cloud bloody cuckoo land.

Kudos to the author for having the guts to move beyond the usual mob of halfwits screaming at how Wenger is a ‘whinger’ and how this is a ‘man’s game’.
The arseblog posting summed up pretty much everything i was thinking.